“Tray be silent, child,” added Miss Philippa.
“Yes, aunt.”
“I say your poor mamma must have known that she was degrading the whole family—degrading us, Isabella.”
“Yes, sister, degrading us,” assented that lady.
“By marrying a penniless man of absolutely no birth.”
“Whatever,” assented Miss Isabella.
“As I have often told you, children, it was during the corrupting times of the Commonwealth that the lineal descendants of Sir Guy Dymcoques—the s not sounded, my dears—allowed the family name to be altered into Dymcox, which by letters patent was made imperative, and the proper patronymic has never been restored to its primitive orthography. It is a blot on our family history to which I will no more allude.”
Miss Isabella allowed the fan to fall into her lap, and accentuated the hollowness of her thin cheek by pressing it in with one pointed finger.
“To resume,” said Miss Philippa, while her nieces watched her with wondering eyes: “our dear sister Delia, your poor mamma, repented bitterly for her weakness in marrying a poor man—your papa, children—and being taken away to a dreary place in Central France, where your papa had the management of a very leaden silver-mine, which only produced poverty. The sufferings to which Mr Julian Riversley exposed your poor mamma were dreadful, my dears. And,” continued Miss Philippa, dotting each eye with her handkerchief, which was not moistened, “your poor mamma died. She was killed, I might say, by the treatment of your papa; but ‘De mortuis,’ Isabella?”
“‘Nil nisi bonum,’” sighed the Honourable Isabella.